Pierre Henry

Pierre Henry was a French composer, born in Paris on 9 December 1927. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen, Nadia Boulanger and the percussionist Félix Passerone. From 1949 he worked with Pierre Schaeffer at the radio studio of the RTF, where the two made Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950) and the opera Orphée 53, staged at Donaueschingen. He left the RTF in 1958 and set up his own studio. His long partnership with the choreographer Maurice Béjart produced Messe pour le temps présent (1967), written with Michel Colombier, whose "Psyché Rock" became a hit.